The laws of rural Kentucky were known to be unfair and hard to avoid. This is partially the result of the 13th Amendment only abolishing slavery outside the prison system. Throughout the South, racial laws recreated the unpaid labor structures of the prewar period. At the same time, Appalachia, the mountainous region spanning north and south, had a distinct political and social character. The Black population of Appalachian areas was much lower, but Jim Crow laws—laws imposed to control Black individuals and groups—were often adopted in those areas.

Specifically, “miscegenation laws” worked to resist integration or hybridization of ideas of whiteness and Blackness. Passed less than a year after the Confederate surrender at Appomattox Courthouse, Kentucky’s “miscegenation laws” were some of the strictest in the country, notably defining “miscegenation” as marriage between a white person and a Black person. Blackness was defined along the lines of the “One Drop” rule, which meant any Black ancestry meant strict Blackness under law. In 1894, the Kentucky legislature redefined “miscegenation” as marriage between a white person and a person of color, including American Indigenous peoples and people with Asian heritage.

In the novel, “Blues” are considered people of color. Honey and her family are called “Blues” because their skin condition, methemoglobinemia, causes their skin to turn blue; thus, they are not considered white.